For the Love of Money (6 page)

“Yeah, I daydreamed about all of that,” I admitted. How could I
not
dream of making a movie about my life story?

“Well, what are you waiting for? You need
me
to tell you to go for it? Just get busy and do your thing,” Raheema persisted in pushing me. “Once you put your mind to getting what you want, Tracy,
nobody
can stop
you,
and that's the
truth!
”

I tried to play it off and act reserved about her suggestions, but by the time I hung up the phone with my girl Raheema, I was nervous for some reason. I guess I could feel it deep down in my soul. I really
could
make it happen. I had the energy, the talent, the passion, and the drive to do whatever the hell I wanted to do. It was all up to me.

I stood up and took a deep breath. My decision was made already. That's why I was nervous. It was like that single moment before you hit the stage to do your thing. The anxiety. The anticipation. I was filled with it. I wanted to go where the stars were and see just how brightly I could shine, or see if I was only bullshitting myself.

“Well, here goes everything,” I said out loud.

I had a college friend at Hampton who moved out to Los Angeles to teach at the elementary level. She was a Spanish minor, she said, to make more money out there. So if I wanted to try my luck at writing, performing poetry, or even acting out in Hollywood where the stars were, then I wanted
to have that back up plan, to teach on the side. In hindsight, I guess I wasn't as confident as I thought. I didn't want to become a damn fool and end up broke and struggling out there for some dream. Maybe that's what I was waiting for, a final push to give me the courage to go for it. We all need that extra push sometimes.

As for stardom in New York, where my book was being republished, I never even thought of going up there. That place was like an oversized Philadelphia to me. I went there a few times and was not impressed. It wasn't the kind of place where you could reinvent yourself at a higher level. I needed to go much farther away from home anyway, so that I could
feel
like I went somewhere. From Philadelphia, New York was only a hop and a skip.

I had never been to Los Angeles, so I didn't know what to expect. I just had to make sure that I stayed away from red or blue outfits, and that I didn't talk too much about my East Coast home. That coastal thing, started up by rap music rivalries, was a damn trip. I wanted to make sure that I was better safe than sorry out there. I loved Tupac
and
Biggie; Death Row Records
and
Bad Boy, but they
all
needed to grow up and stop acting like... N-I–double G–As. They were too talented and popular for that.

So I pulled out my phone book and dug up my girl's parents' phone number in Baltimore, and made the call to get in touch with her. She gave me her parents' home number in Baltimore because she knew it would take her a while to get settled out in LA, and it was no sense in giving out numbers that could change.

“Hello,” her mother answered the phone in Baltimore. I
assumed
it was her mother, but just to make sure, I kept my introduction simple.

“Yes, this is Tracy Ellison. I went to Hampton with Kendra Dayton.”

“Oh, yeah, that's my daughter.”

Good,
I thought to myself. “Oh, well, how do you do?” I asked her.

“I'm fine. So, what can I do for you?”

“Well, I'm a middle school teacher in Philadelphia, and Kendra told me that she wanted to teach in the Los Angeles area, and that I could come and visit her whenever I felt up to traveling to the West Coast.”

“Yeah, she
is
a schoolteacher out there, and she
loves
it! You need me to give her your number?”

“Would you please, and have her call me as soon as she gets a chance?”

“Okay. Let me get out a pen and a piece of paper and I'll call her tonight. You know she's still at school out there right now with the three-hour time difference,” her mother said. “So I usually call her right before I go to bed.”

I wasn't even thinking about the time change. “Oh, yeah, thanks for reminding me.”

I gave her my number, chatted her up a bit, and hung up the phone with an energy boost. I felt like someone had just poured a five-pound bag of sugar into my veins. I needed to go out jogging, play tennis, run up and down the stairway, have some good sex, or
something.
I was just burning up with energy!

I couldn't
wait
to plan my trip to California. My phone rang right in the middle of my new excitement.

“Hello.”

“Hey, girl. How was your school day?” It was Mike, a muscle-bound weight trainer that I was seeing. I kept real loose ties with him, because I didn't need no macho shit holding me down. In fact, I only dealt with him because he could give a massage like an Egyptian god or something. He could eat a
mean
dish of stew (if you know what I mean) at that.

I sighed and said, “;Don't take me back to that place. I was just starting to recuperate.”

He chuckled. “It was that bad, hunh?”

“Yeah, that bad,” I answered.

I thought about asking him what he was doing and inviting him over for an afternoon sweat-out. He had called at just the right time. Mike had the kind of employment, as a weight trainer with Philadelphia sports jocks, where he had money and plenty of time on his hands. He was always bragging about who he worked with, and who played for the Eagles, the Sixers, or the Phillies. I didn't really pay the shit any mind, myself, because once I grew up and went away to college, I learned to appreciate the power of making my own damn money and not sweating some rich assholes who are mostly out for a pussy chase. Not that
all
of them were like that, but you know what I mean,
and
you know the kind of women who chase them. Nevertheless, I was still a woman and sex was sex. It was good for the soul.

I cut straight through the chase. “What are you doing right now? You have any free time?”

“Later on tonight, but not right now,” Mike answered.

I didn't want to set up anything for later though. What if I didn't feel like it later on? Or what if I wanted to start planning things for LA. I didn't need a man in the way of that, especially if he knew that I was going somewhere. Mike tried to play the role like he could be as straight business as I was about our loose relationship, but I knew that he really liked me, and it
would all come out as soon as he knew I was planning to relocate. I could already predict his response.

“Well, try and call me later on then,” I told him.

“Why don't we just set a time?”

“Why don't we just leave it open?” I asked him instead. “And if we close it, then we close it later on?”

He chuckled again and said, “You're a hard woman to break, you know that?”

He knew what time it was, and he knew that he couldn't hold me down.

I said, “I'm as hard as those damn weights you lift,” just to rub it in. I owed that all to Mr. Victor Hinson, or Qadeer Muhammad, as he called himself, for leaving me hanging like he did after getting out of jail and hooking up with someone else.

“You gon' need to soften up
sometime.
Like when I put my hands on you, and everything else,” Mike teased me.

What would a man be without a good comeback line, right? I just laughed at him.

“Well, we'll just have to wait and see what happens.”

“Aw'ight then. We'll play it your way.”

I hung up the phone, and my energy had already settled a bit. I laid back on my bed, still in my bra and panties, and relaxed. Suddenly, I felt kinky. I decided to take my bra and panties off, and turn my oscillating fan on low, and let it blow over my naked body in bed, as I daydreamed of how sweet my future would be out in Hollywood, because Hollywood got swingers.

You want this?
I asked a chocolate, baldheaded man in my daydream.

Yes.
All
of it,
he told me.

I spread my legs wider with my right knee up and stroked my stomach with a sexy grin.

Well, come and get it then.

I just relaxed with my daydream and let my fan blow me up and down.

$   $   $

I never did hook up with Mike that night. I went to the movies by myself instead, and began doing research on the whole Hollywood name game, you know, who was doing what and who was successful at it. Mike wanted to accompany me on my poetry night that Thursday, but I never took any men to my readings. I didn't want to be stuck with him if a deep,
deep
brother did his thing up onstage and I decided to seduce him right there on the spot.
Well, the shit never happened because a lot of poetic brothers, who I came in contact with, either brought their own women to the readings, were too artistically busy to just chill, or were unorganized and full of themselves, so no one ever qualified, and that
hunk
of a man, Philadelphia's own Wadud, was happily married already.

I guess I was always fantasizing about something. Hollywood was the perfect place for me.

Right when I grabbed my bag in my seventies-inspired poetry gear— oversized bell-bottom jeans, a rayon shirt, and big shoes (call me a chameleon)—my telephone rang.

I was hesitant to answer it. I had already told Mike no, and I didn't have time for a chat with anyone else, but I answered it anyway, just in case it was something important.

It was. Kendra Dayton was calling me from California.

She said, “Tracy Ellison. What's up, girl? My mom called and told me that you were ready to visit California. Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner. It's the end of the school year, and you
know
how that can get.”

“Girl, don't even go there,” I told her. “I have
so
many horror stories.”

“Don't we all. We need a teachers' mental clinic, right?” she said.

I begged to differ. I said, “No, we need a
parents'
mental clinic.”

“Ay-men to that,” she responded and laughed. “Aaayy-
men!”

I said, “Your mother told me that you loved teaching out there.”

“That doesn't mean that I don't have any problems.”

I laughed. I could tell that Kendra and I would hit it off well if we lived in the same city. I didn't even talk to her all that much at Hampton. We just chatted when we saw each other, but as we had ended up in the same teaching profession, it gave us more to relate to.

“So, can I crash at your place for a week, or what? Do you have a kinky boyfriend that I need to know about in advance?” I joked. I don't know what was wrong with me, but sometimes I just said the first thing that came to mind, particularly when I was pressed, and I was pressed to see Hollywood.

Luckily, Kendra found my joke appealing and laughed.

“They have a different kind of black man out here. They're more laid back,” she said. “
Too
laid back sometimes. I dream every now and then of inviting out a few in-your-face Baltimore brothers from home.

“‘Hey girl, come here, yo',” she mocked them.

I smiled. “Do they use ‘yo' for everything in Baltimore?”

“Yes they do.”

“So, you mean to tell me that guys out in California are not really
roughnecks like they show in these movies?” I couldn't believe that they could lie that much. Were movies
that much
make-believe?

Kendra said, “Girl, do you think I would waste my time out here with
them
fools? Yeah, they have those crazy gangbangers out here, but I'm talking about
professional
and college-educated men, not no 'hood rats, but they
do
have them out here, and they are just as ignorant as they are in those movies.”

“So where do you live out there?” I asked her. I almost forgot about my poetry reading.

“Carson. It's right next to Compton, and right above Long Beach.”

“So you're right in the midst of the music makers.”

“Yeah, and I'll tell you something else too. All that crazy stuff they talk about in their music, they're not even lying. Some of these people out here are downright foul, and they use the N-word, the MF-word and B-word in regular conversation.

“On the East Coast, at least we know when to change it up,” she said. “Well, they don't change anything out here, and then they want to complain about a lack of jobs. Well, who wants to hire you walking around with plaits in your hair, your pants hanging down, underwear showing, no education, and a filthy mouth with no shame to it?”

I didn't realize that Kendra was so fiery. I didn't know what else to say, but I realized that I was running late.

“So, when are you planning to come out here?” she asked me, right on cue. I had to go.

“I guess in mid July or early August,” I told her. “I still have to buy plane tickets. Will you still be there this summer?”

“Yeah, I'll be here. I have plane tickets to fly home to Baltimore next week. I'll spend the last week of June back at home, and fly right back out to LAX. The weather and the terrain is beautiful out here. Wait until you see it.

“We didn't have any palm trees in Baltimore,” she joked.

I told her that I was running late for my poetry reading and got her number.

“Yeah, you did write poetry,” she remembered. “You think you might want to write screenplays or something out here? I have connections if you do. I know a woman who works with the screenwriters guild.”

Man, talk about things moving fast! I began to wonder what took me so long to try that big move to the West Coast myself.

“Well, we'll sit down and talk about all of that when I get out there,” I promised her.

I left for my poetry reading with the biggest head in the word. I just
knew
that I would put my thing down once I got out to California. I was cruising in my black Toyota Camry on Lincoln Drive and heading toward downtown on air. You couldn't tell me anything!